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New York's Mayoral Race: Bill Thompson

Yes. I would call it a Chief Jobs Office for the City of New York. There are a number of job training entities that are not being coordinated, they aren’t tied into the private job sector, as they should be. That is the first thing. To make sure they bring together all those job training entities. Right now there is no coordinating between all these job-training entities. And I think this should be with a specific target in neighborhoods that have had chronic unemployment. I also think that when you look at the number of small businesses-–many owned by Latinos—New York City has almost been at war with those small businesses. We need to stop this war. We need to focus on safety and regulations not revenue generation. I also think New York City could do a much better job at growing women- and minority-owned businesses. I also think that as we look at New York to become a high-tech city, we have to make sure that our children have an opportunity to get those high-paying jobs and we have to bring that training to high school and middle schools.

What is your affordable housing plan?

My plan is to both build and preserve 120,000 units of housing over the next eight years and 70,000 of those units will be new construction of low moderate and middle income housing because we clearly don’t have enough middle income housing for working people.